Field of Invention
The present disclosure relates to a wafer treatment solution for cleaning a semiconductor wafer. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to a fluorine-containing wafer treatment solution for cleaning a semiconductor wafer, and an apparatus and a method for surface roughness smoothing and removing and flattening at least one edge film hump at an edge of a semiconductor wafer by the wafer treatment solution.
Description of Related Art
In fabricating a general semiconductor element, a multi-layer structure is usually formed on a semiconductor wafer. In the process of forming the multi-layer structure, a photoresist layer is applied on the semiconductor wafer to perform a plurality of patterning processes of the semiconductor wafer. The photoresist layer is normally formed on the semiconductor wafer by a spin-coating method.
When the semiconductor wafer is spun, an appropriate amount of a photoresist agent is spray near the surface of the center of the semiconductor wafer, and then the photoresist agent is spray from the center of the semiconductor wafer to edges of the semiconductor wafer by a centrifugal force, so as to form a photoresist layer on the surface of the semiconductor wafer. However, the spin-coated photoresist agent may form a plurality of edge resist beads with different sizes at the edges of the semiconductor wafer near the edge wall and the bottom surface of the semiconductor wafer.
Currently, a typical treatment solution for edge bead removal (EBR) is an organic solution prepared by alcohols, ethers or ether esters to dissolve the edge resist beads. When the edge resist beads are removed by the organic solution, a plurality of photoresist film humps at the very edge of the semiconductor wafer is formed at an interface area of the edge photoresist film contacting the organic solution. The photoresist film humps may affect an exposure focus accuracy of a lithography process to cause image distortion. Further, the photoresist film humps may also result in incompletely etching or removing after etching, and the residual humps may peel at following processes or cause that other films formed thereon are not easily attached, which is a contamination source of harmful particles at the following processes, and may cause a great damage on semiconductor elements formed on the semiconductor wafer.
Therefore, there is a need for an improved wafer treatment solution and a method for edge bead removal by using the wafer treatment solution to solve the aforementioned problems met in the art.